1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a coordinate input device for facilitating the operation of a pointer for a display.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, GUIs(graphical User Interfaces) have been adopted so as to improve the operability of PCs, and mice and other pointing devices are widely used to point to icons on a display screen.
Most mice that are now commonly used are of a type that is adapted to output operation distances of a mouse moved by the user in the X-axis and the Y-axis directions and the operations of two click switches thereon.
Directions in and distances over which a mouse travels are decomposed in the X-axis and the Y-axis directions for detection. A cursor displayed on the screen is moved in response to the results of the detection and when the cursor overlaps an icon, a click switch is operated to activate an operation corresponding to the icon.
A mouse with a wheel comprises the mouse described above and an additional wheel. In a mouse of this type, rotations obtained by operating the wheel can be allocated, for instance, to a scroll function to scroll an application software on the screen, and this can serve to simplify the operation of application software that has become more complicated in recent years.
The aforesaid mouse with a wheel can be operated only in one direction, and therefore, in a case where the wheel rotation data are allocated as a scroll function to scroll through an application software on the screen, scrolling is limited to only one direction. In this case, a scroll bar is still needed for scrolling in the other direction.
Furthermore, the operation of a cursor by moving the mouse sometimes becomes difficult in a place which is too narrow to move the mouse around. In such a case, in addition to a first operation method for moving the mouse, a second operation method is desired to be provided in which a result similar to that obtained with the first operation method can be obtained without moving the mouse around.